Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews gathered in Israel Monday for an emotionally charged funeral tribute to an Israeli rabbi killed in the United Arab Emirates.
Tzvi Kogan, 28, was found dead by security services last week, following what Israeli officials and an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group he was affiliated with called an anti-Semitic attack.
Neither Emirati nor Israeli officials have provided any details about the circumstances of Kogan’s murder.
“How can you already be gone?” his father, Alexander Kogan, said in Kfar Chabad, a religious settlement in Israel belonging to the ultra-Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement that Kogan was a part of.
Kogan, who is also a rabbi, delivered his eulogy after tearing up at the start of his speech, just metres (yards) away from his son’s coffin.
“You loved everyone and all your friends loved you. You always wanted to do for others and never asked for anything for yourself. Tzvi was innocent, and that’s how he arrives in heaven,” his father told mourners.
Emirati authorities said they have apprehended three suspects from Uzbekistan over the killing.
“The whole world is shaken by your murder –- they hate us around the world because we are Jews,” Rabbi David Yosef, the Grand Sephardic Rabbi of Israel, told mourners.
Kogan’s body was brought to Israel earlier Monday for his funeral that began with tributes and prayers in Kfar Chabad.
“You never harmed even a fly,” Rabbi Shimon Rabinowitz said, adding: “They hurt you because they wanted to strike at the symbol of faith and Judaism.”
Speakers dressed in traditional black garb delivered defiant speeches during the ceremony that lasted around an hour and a half.
One speaker said three babies had already been named in Kogan’s honour.
Kogan was expected to be buried around 11:00 pm (2100 GMT) at the Mount of Olives in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.
Kogan’s death has also been a blow to the tiny Jewish and Israeli communities in the Muslim-majority UAE, which have kept a lower profile since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in Gaza in October 2023.
